


all the works and days of hands

by Teaotter



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-17
Updated: 2010-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:27:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/pseuds/Teaotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah has only a moment to decide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the works and days of hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amilyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amilyn/gifts).



> Title and references to _Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_ by T.S. Eliot.

In Sarah's life, there is Before, and there is After. She thinks that motherhood is like that for everyone. You stop measuring out your life in coffee spoons and find new dimensions that grow with your child.

At first, she was just running. There were nine months to survive. Then a year, then three, and more, until she stopped counting. Paranoia became a second skin, as much a part of her as John’s brilliant smiles. She couldn't imagine losing either of them.

As John grew, she measured her life in skills. Chess and tactics, karate and muy thai, parkour and gun safety. She watched John soak them all up faster than she ever could. It was frightening and vindicating. Sometimes she could see past her son to the leader he would need to be some day. Sometimes.

Sarah learned what she could and pushed on, finding him new teachers and new skills. She wasn't trying to save humanity. Just her son.

She didn't have a plan. There was no plan. With robots coming back from the future, they couldn't afford to have a plan. But in amongst learning how to read the tracks of men and jeeps on muddy jungle roads, how to navigate in the wilderness and underground without a map, Sarah learned to steer her life fiercely between two markers: John's survival, and the next attack.

As long as John was alive, Sarah could hope for the future. She had to fight her urges to smother him, to keep him safe. She had dreams of locking him in a bunker with enough food to last him a decade. They weren't nightmares. At least she'd know he couldn't be killed crossing the road.

But if putting him aside were the right choice, the one that would keep John alive and fighting -- then he'd never make it out of that bunker. Because the terminators would find him.

It was a time war. Everything she did that kept them alive, Skynet would find out about in the future, and send metal after himm. As long as the robots kept coming, Sarah knew she was still steering him correctly. The irony of that cuts her every time she sees Kyle in John's face. Skynet made them all.

She never told John how relieved she was when Cromartie found them again in New Mexico. After two long years, she didn't feel safe. She didn't feel hidden. She felt obsolete. The terminators won't give up until she -- and John -- are no longer threats in the future.

So she stops measuring her life, forgets birthdays (hers, at least) and holidays and ages that aren't listed on passports and fake IDs. By the time John goes to the future, Sarah has been so many ages she hardly remembers which one is actually true.

When John runs through the portal, there is nothing to measure, because Sarah has only a moment to go after him.

The sparks of the time portal are flaring across the room. Through the glare, Sarah can barely make out the dim smudge of concrete. She braces for the feel of it under her boots, takes the breath that will send her forward. She has thrown herself into the future for John before. Every minute of every day, really, is a blind step into the future. This shouldn't be different. But it is.

She only has a moment, but in combat, those are the moments that matter. When you don't have time to think, you fall back on training and protocols and strategies you don't even know you believe.

She always thought she was doing it for John.

But it doesn't even take a moment to realize that her decision is already made. Sarah isn't moving.

The portal is open and sizzling, and John is on the other side and Sarah doesn't follow. She can hear John saying, clear as day, that he loves her, and she's answering that she loves him too, even though she doesn't know if he said it in real life or if he only said it in her head. Maybe it was only in her head, but it doesn't matter, because she means it as much as apparently, she means to stay in this time.

It goes against everything she's ever done. It goes against everything she's ever thought of herself. Her son, _her son_ is on the other side of that portal, and she is letting him go. She can't see through the glare any more. She can't see the room, can't hear the booming sounds of the building above them slowly falling apart. For a moment, Sarah has no idea who she is.

And then the portal closes, and the moment for revisions is over. John is in the future, and Sarah is in the present. She doesn't know why, but that's something she'll have to figure out later. Science says that decisions are made in a split second and justified later by the rest of the mind. Someday, she may have an explanation.

Right now, she has to act, and in order to do that, she needs to think.

She knows the building above them is coming down. You don't run a jet plane into a skyscraper and expect the skyscraper to win. So they have very little time, assuming there is any way out of this sub-basement, assuming Skynet isn't sending in ground troops while they stand here. Assuming she hasn't done exactly the wrong thing by standing her ground.

Those are assumptions she has to make.

So she falls back on old protocols. Take what you can. Destroy what you can't. It's a dizzying relief when the thoughts come cleanly. She can see the room again, and _see_ it: There is nothing in this room that matters to the war but Cameron's body and the computer banks that Sarah can't read enough to determine what they might take (that was John's job). They all look like servers to her.

So she pulls the cord from Cameron's body (destroy everything) and shoves it, chair and all, toward the door. Ellison joins her without a word, and they go. The building coming down will destroy the computers, or they can come back and do it right later. But for the moment, they have to save themselves.

Sarah has to salvage something out of this disastrous day. Maybe herself. She can worry about John later. She has the rest of her life to worry about John. But she needs to know if she's done the right thing.

She has never wished so hard for another Skynet attack.


End file.
